Section archive - Multiculturalism & Diversity

In this study, the authors sought to understand how students in Northern Ireland make sense of competing approaches to history, and in particular, how they understand the relationship between the approaches they encounter in school and elsewhere. Using qualitative, task-based interviews, the authors interviewed 253 secondary students. The authors found that these students had learned about the past in a variety of formal and informal settings, and they navigated among these multiple sources in a conscious attempt to refine and extend their historical understanding as they followed up on interests initiated in one setting by seeking out information elsewhere.

This discussion focuses on an aspect of teacher education for diversity. It is preservice teachers’ and teacher educators’ attitudes and beliefs about racial, cultural, and ethnic differences. Throughout this discussion, problematic attitudes and beliefs about various dimensions of cultural diversity are identified; explanations about how they are manifested among teacher education students are presented; their effects and consequences are proposed; and some suggestions are made for developing more positive attitudes and actions toward cultural diversity in teaching.

In this article, the author discusses some common themes found in her experiences as a Latina undergraduate student. During the summer of 2008, the author conducted fieldwork in a rural town in Mexico. The author discusses her experience as the only Latina student on this trip which were similar to those discussed by Latina scholars. The author considers the pros and cons of being an insider and an outsider to a rural town in Mexico, the use of Latinos as cultural brokers while denying their contributions as social scientists, and the blame she experienced for her lack of adjustment.

This article critiques the articles by Connor et al., Croninger and Valli, Pianta and Hamre, and Rowan and Correnti, by taking a cultural-historical perspective on reading and reading instruction. The author of this critique presents evidence that challenges each of these assumptions and argues that by accepting them, the authors of the critiqued articles institute an order that values the system above relational aspects of schooling and teachers’ informed decision making.